Houthi attacks disrupt Saudi education and threaten Vision 2030 amid regional instability

Last week, some students in Saudi Arabia were told they should stay at home and attend classes online, due to continued threats from attacks by the Houthi group in neighboring Yemen. But the very next day, they were given the all-clear and allowed to return to school in person.

The conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia in Yemen seems to have become part of everyday life in Saudi Arabia. After a period of comparative calm, the Houthis have been ramping up attacks on the country, starting July, and have fired many missiles and drones over the border.

Over recent weeks, the Houthi militia have also pushed further into Yemen, taking more control of the Yemeni coast and several islands in the Red Sea. This means they can oversee maritime traffic in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The waterway connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

The renewed Houthi attacks endanger Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia's ambitious project to move the kingdom away from its dependence on oil revenues, which was conceived by Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. To make Vision 2030 a reality, Saudi Arabia needs stability — but right now, the outlook is moving in the opposite direction.

"The escalation in Yemen is drawing the Saudis deeper into the regional war, a war that Saudi Arabia actually wanted to prevent," said Marcus Schneider, who heads the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's Regional Peace and Security Project in the Middle East.

Impact on world's energy

Saudi Arabia's energy infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to Houthi attacks, which have already disrupted the so-called East-West pipeline, which runs for over 1,200 kilometers. It was being used to transport oil after other routes, such as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, became precarious due to fighting between the United States, Israel and Iran.

Houthi attacks disabled the pipeline although reports from a week ago suggest it is being used again. And thanks to the Houthis, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — which means "gate of tears" in English — is also coming under pressure.

Andrew Leber, a nonresident scholar in the Middle East program of the US think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calls it a "one-two punch of pipeline attacks and Red Sea seizures." In fact, it may send the Saudis back to the Strait of Hormuz to try to ship their oil, even though that route is still heavily restricted.

Who will help?

It is unlikely that Saudi ally, the US, is going to send help. Washington has said it will support the Saudis with intelligence and reconnaissance, but President Donald Trump appears reluctant to get involved in a direct military campaign against the Houthis.

According to a US-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, this may partially be because the it is feeling the strain of its ongoing campaign against Iran.

"The US military is reportedly facing serious challenges, including shortages of some sophisticated interceptors," the CSIS wrote in a commentary last week.

The US Council on Foreign Relations, or CFR, has also written about dwindling stocks of Patriot and interceptor missiles, as well as cruise missiles.

So the risk of opening another front in its war with Iran, in Yemen, is not a welcome prospect for the US.

As it is, US airstrikes are unlikely to resolve the Houthi problem anyway. The CFR writes that to defuse the Houthi threat, a large, coordinated ground operation is needed, especially if forces want to push the Yemeni militia back out of the areas they recently took around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Saudi Arabia is not too enthusiastic about this either. Despite help from the US and neighboring United Arab Emirates, a Saudi coalition that fought against the Houthis between 2015 and 2022 failed to achieve any kind of decisive victory. It also demonstrated the limits of Saudi military power.

There's clear military asymmetry. Saudi Arabia possesses modern weapons and spends enormous sums on its armed forces. But the Houthis don't need to win a conventional war. It is enough for them to use missiles and drones to threaten infrastructure and disrupt shipping.

"The Houthis are well-established in Yemen and can withstand considerable blows," Schneider told DW. "Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, needs stability above all for its 2030 economic vision. And this is currently further away than ever."

Help from the Europeans?

Since early 2024, through what is known as Operation Aspides, Europe has been protecting international shipping in the Red Sea. Italy has recently said it intends to secure passage for its own merchant ships with its navy. And a few days ago France said it would send soldiers, radar systems and air defense to the Saudis in order to protect the Red Sea port of Yanbu, the terminus of the East-West pipeline.

Still, these European initiatives are unlikely to bring about any sort of strategic shift in Yemen. And experts argue Europe is unwilling to accept the political and military cost of a protracted war there.

"The fact that France has now announced it will provide concrete military assistance has been received very positively in Riyadh," Schneider explained. "But still the question remains as to whether this can fundamentally alter the military balance."

The recently formed mutual defense pact with Pakistan and Turkey, known as the Mecca alliance, also has its limits. The military leaders of all three countries have consulted with one another over recent Houthis attacks but Turkey and Pakistan are also reluctant to be drawn into a conflict that would see them confronting Iran directly.

Diplomacy the way forward

All this means that diplomatic overtures will likely become more important again.

In a previous interview with DW, Abdulghani al-Iryani of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies noted that the Houthis do actually have an interest in relations with Saudi Arabia.

"Yemen is completely economically dependent on Saudi Arabia, both as a source of humanitarian aid and as a labor market for Yemeni migrant workers," al-Iryani said.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has tried to curb the Houthis' influence through diplomacy and by uniting divided Yemeni government forces. However the militia's current advance seems to demonstrate the limitations of this strategy.

This story was originally published in German.